REALITY CHECK: THE REAL PARKING WARS
Written by Charles Ellison on September 25, 2017
While they might seem miles apart, they’re very much interconnected: Parking tickets and poverty. The former may be feeding off the latter like a parasite, yet there’s not a whole lot of conversation about it beyond the mix of shrugs, the sound of tickets being ripped up in anger, and the quiet epidemic of low-income people faced with suspended driver’s licenses, lost wages and high stress because of it.
While Philadelphia remains, steadfastly and not so proudly, the poorest big city in America (brought to you by consistent Census Bureau data), there’s that niggling question of how much the city’s Commonwealth-owned and infamous Parking Authority contributes to that. It’s difficult to find the direct data for it; the Authority is not all that transparent and, frankly, it’s probably not all that concerned. But there is data we can extrapolate from.
